


Ebb Tide

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-09-30
Updated: 1999-09-30
Packaged: 2018-11-20 06:50:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11330685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Just a snippet that hasn't found a story of its own.





	Ebb Tide

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Ebb Tide by Jessica Harris

Title: Ebb Tide  
By: Jessica Harris  
Summary: M/K. Just a snippet that hasn't found a story of its own.   
R for thoughts on morbidity and mortality, but no sex.  
Disclaimer: They're not mine, for which they are probably grateful.  
Feedback: Always. 

* * *

Ebb Tide  
13/03/99  
=========

The glowing red digits on the alarm clock flicked over to 3:00 am and Krycek was wide awake.

Of course it was 3:00 in the morning. Drowning hour. Ebb tide. Moment of death in the night. It was three in the morning and he wondered if he'd ever sleep again.

He glanced over at Mulder. The pale glow from the streetlight outside highlighted the knobs of his spine, drew arcs of shadow over the vaulted arch of his rib-cage, shaded the tidy ball-and-socket roll of his shoulder as he shifted in his sleep, dreaming. 

Krycek looked away. It filled him with horror sometimes, the terrible vulnerability of the human body. He had seen life stolen from so many of them, watched them shattered, savaged, destroyed in unimaginable ways. It had become far too easy to look at them and see only the ways in which they could be taken apart. 

In moods like this he looked at Mulder and saw his body *demolished*. Column of spine shattered; vault of rib-cage crushed and flattened; ball ripped from socket as the perfect architecture of bone was reduced to rubble. He looked, and saw all his weight and substance and firm touchable flesh rendered mere meat as his essence drained away in the viscous seep of blood.

He stretched a hand towards Mulder's chest to reassure himself that it still rose and fell. His fingers shook perceptibly, and with a grunt of self-disgust he threw off the bed-clothes and padded softly from the room. 

He didn't like scotch, but it was the one thing Mulder had in his cupboards, and tonight all that mattered was the warmth in his belly. He clutched the bottle against his side with his ruined arm and settled on the couch, pulling the blanket around him. There was a video in the machine and he grabbed the remote and clicked it on, hoping for distraction. But the soulless pistonings and calculated writhe that appeared on the screen only sent his thoughts spiralling downwards again. The actors' eyes looked dead and empty, and if he closed his eyes their cries...

He turned it off, leaned his head back against the couch and hauled deep breaths into his lungs. God, they had trained him too well, sex and death and sex and death until neither could touch him without the other at its shoulder.

Another desperate swallow of scotch and he felt the silence of the room take on a different quality. He raised his eyes to the window and saw the reflection of Mulder standing behind him, leaning in the doorway. Mulder met his eyes in the glass and lifted his eyebrows, dryly asked "Thirsty?"

Krycek was in no mood for banter. He rose unsteadily to his feet and said "I should go. My clothes..."

He tried not to touch Mulder on his way back into the bedroom, but his hand brushed against his belly as he passed him, and without his willing it his fingers clutched at the handle of Mulder's hip-bone, and then the rest of him followed, until he stood pressed tight against Mulder's body, feeling his heartbeat, his body sweet and his breath slightly stale with sleep. He pressed an ear to Mulder's throat, heard the muffed glottal of a swallow.

"I should go," he said again. 

But Mulder wrapped warm arms around him and held him there. "Jesus, Alex," he said, voice worried. "What's wrong?"

End. 


End file.
